Not really, sadly, but the North is making great progress in ensuring that more decisions about the North are made in the North both through devolution deals and the work on the Northern Powerhouse. Yesterday I was speaking at an Insider conference in Bury where over a hundred senior business representaives came together to discuss what we need to do to create a northern powerhouse with, not surprisingly, a big emphasis on transport.

Questions were also raised about how non-metropolitan areas in the North get involved which is largely going to be achieved by a sectoral rather than a spatial analysis of the northern economy. In this context, on Monday I had a very positive meeting with representatives from the North Wales Economic Ambitions Board, whose transport infrastructure is totally dependent on that of the North of England, who rightly see their economy as one that very much contributes to that of the North, and whose tourism offer is very much part of the North's quality of life offer.

At a more local level, yesterday afternoon the Manchester Leaders' Forum had their last look at the draft Manchester Strategy 2015-2025 now that a very extensive consultation process has been concluded. Although this is very explicitly a strategy for the city, not for the city council, it is the council that ultimately has to adopt the strategy on behalf of the city. The next stage will be for a report on the outcomes of the consultation and the revised draft to go to Scrutiny later this month, then the Council Executive in January, and finally full City Council later that month. It is proposed we will continue to measure progress through the annual State of the City report ( the most recent has just been published ) because we will only continue to grow and develop our city if we understand clearly how we are doing and what changes we need to make to policy to achieve our shared vision.

This entry was posted by leadersblog@manchester.gov.uk on 02/12/2015.
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